Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim [Review]

FULL REVIEW

 What better way to enter the Chinese Year of the Dragon than killing a bunch of dragons. That’s largely what you’ll be doing in the newest of the Elder Scrolls saga.

Skyrim takes place in the northern Nord state of the same name in the Elder Scrolls world of Tamriel. Set 200 years after Oblivion, the last game, Skyrim’s peace is broken by the invasion of mighty colossal dragons, marking the start of the end of the world according to the Elder Scrolls Nordic prophesies. Conspiracy theorists can go mad at this point by drawing a straight parallel to 2012, year of the Dragon. The only one who can stand up to the dragons is you, Dhovakiin, Dragonborn. Cue in orchestral music with appropriate chanting as you embark upon your journey to save the world. You see, a Dragonborn is born with the power of the Shout, which Dragons are vulnerable to.

That’s not all. While the dragons are busy toasting the plebs, there’s a massive civil war happening, with Nords refusing to be under the thumb of the Imperial empire. So, from the beginning itself, you have the choice to align with the Nords in their resistance or with the Imperials, whose only goal is to unify the entire Tamriel under their law. Both sides are equally justified.

The main quest can be completed in around 20 hours; however the main quest is just about 10% of the entire game. The magic of Skyrim is the other 90% and your sense of adventure.

The signature of any Elder Scrolls game is the massive, open game world laid before you to explore. The same goes for Skyrim, as it unfurls before you with all the Himalaya-like topography that’s associated with northern mountainous regions. You can go anywhere, do anything and be anyone. The astounding thing is that the overlaying plot line mentioned above is just the tip of the iceberg, for Skyrim is peppered with a lot more stories, waiting to be discovered by the adventurous. Think of it as a MMORPG without the MMO.

You start off by creating your character from one of several races native to Tamriel, each with their special abilities. You can level up by earning XP from doing various things, mostly killing. However, you have sub-abilities or skills, which you level up separately the more you do them. When you level up your character, you earn perk points, which you can spend buying perks for your levelled-up skills.

To simplify things, if you are a mage,  the more you use your fireball spell, the more your Destruction skill levels up. You can then buy perks on that skill. There are a lot of skills to level up and the permutations and combinations of characters you can be are quite varied.

Not only that, there’s lots of extra curricular abilities you can wield, like smithing, enchanting and alchemical cooking. So, you can either be a streetsmart BattleMage specializing in two-handed weapons or a Vampiric Necromancer or a stealth specialist thief/assassin with a penchant for cooking and strong in the use of illusion spells that influence people's minds. Yes, you read that right, you can become a Vampire as well as a Werewolf, both with their plus and minus points. You can customise and train your character any way you like.

The crux of the battle system lies in your two hands. Literally. Bethesda has built in a combat engine that works on weapons or spells wielded in each hand. So what you have is seamless, fantastic combat that is as exciting as any action FPS today. Dual wielded blades whirl at speed, chopping and lopping off enemies. Mages can weird the power of fire and ice in each hand. Add to that your Dragon Shout, which decimates enemies with sheer vocal force, which you can unlock by killing and absorbing dragon souls.. Think Celine Dion, except a thousand times more powerful.

Dragons are massive beasts that roam Skyrim. You can walk up to the nearest peak and stare into the distance to see the dragons flying about. Up close, they are fearsome. Bethesda has spent a lot of time on crafting these magnificent beasts that breathe flame  and frost. Fighting dragons alone can be a daunting task in the early parts of the game; however if you do encounter them near to civilisation, then the villages or townspeople pick up their weapons and rush to your aid.

It’s difficult to describe the whole of Skyrim, a game so huge, in one small review. When reviewing the game, I spent 1 month and 126 hours into the game, and I hadn't gone much into the main quest. In fact, I had been spending most of my time smithing weapons and armour, roaming around the land on foot, raiding tombs and learning Shouts. I’ve fought side by side with the Companions, a guild of warriors. I’ve been a deadly assassin working in the shadows for the Dark Brotherhood. I’m a part-time thief at the Thieves Guild, where I earn my bit of gold, but there’s still so much to see.

One of the biggest plus points of the game is just aimlessly walking about from place to place. Yes, you can fast travel across the map, but walking uncovers most of the beauty of Skyrim. Random little stories of broken families unfold, and even one where I got drunk, had a wild night and woke up next morning in a hangover-like scenario. The game keeps throwing endless quests at you thanks to the Radiant story engine Bethesda has built.

The graphics are top notch in the game, especially if you have a good rig to run it. There are times where you will just stop and stare at the scenery, completely lost at admiring the mist flowing between the white peaks. The weather effects are fantastic, and you just want to sit beside a flowing river while the rain falls gently down. The character models look fantastic, though the faces look slightly odd in the non-human races.

Skyrim is teeming with life. In towns and villages, the denizens of Skyrim go about their work. Each of them have their daily duties to do- chopping wood or tending to the fields. Smiths are hard at work at the forges. Not all are appreciative of you being there; some of them will be friendly and others will have things for you to help them with.

Along the way, there’s lots of small things to tempt you off your path. One of them is the fantastic physics engine built into the game. You can do Fus Ro Dah, the dragon shout for a blast of air that blows people off cliffs or into traps. You can get drunk, have a wild night in a village, Hangover-style or even veer off the path and get married.

No game is complete without its drawbacks and another tradition with Elder Scrolls games is the bugs. In the PC version, the bugs are not game-breaking and have been fixed by the time you are reading this. However, console versions are pretty messy, especially when the frame rate drops considerably the more you discover the world. Chalk that one up to optimisations and will happen in due time. Another gripe is that in a world full of fantastic stories, the main story sort of ends a bit disappointingly. However, this is forgivable when you step back and see the scope of things.

Now we come to an important question. From what you have read above, you must think that Skyrim is pretty deep into RPG Territory. And you would be utterly wrong. Skyrim plays every bit like an action game. At no point does it overwhelm you with excessive stats, yet, even the most ardent RPG fan will find this satisfying. It’s hard to put a finger on how this works. It’s like Bethesda just decided to go so far out into RPG territory that it came out on the other side with a game that can be played by your average FPS player, except instead of guns you have over 100 weapons that can cut, cleave, chop, decapitate, disembowl and crunch. Very satisfyingly, I might add.

All the stars are with Skyrim. Even though it has its flaws, you will be too busy enjoying the game to actually notice. Skyrim is massive, and you are looking at over 200 hours of primetime gaming. It’s something you can truly lose yourself in and that’s why it’s our Game of the Year for 2011.